Above The Clouds
A Steampunk Love Story
By Richard Roberts
Copyright 2012
The whale floated peacefully in front of us, fat and opalescent. Pudgy tentacles waved underneath the bell. I knew that peace was a lie.
I was not expecting Father to hit the accelerator and shoot us out ahead of the squadron. "Father, what are we doing…?"
"Taking all the risk," he answered, lowering the visor and fastening his hat in place.
Ahead of the pack, we dove towards the whale. No, not quite towards the whale. Down, underneath it. Propellers whined, and I tried not to join them. Instead, I got to work. Close hatches, withdraw the lift tanks under the armor, lay flaps close to the propellers and sleek along the wings. Speed. Our lives were about to depend on it.
The whale's tentacles looked a lot less plump and squishy and a lot more like huge ropes of twitching muscle as they loomed up in front of us. Then the first harpoon hit the whale, and those tentacles went insane. The curtain parted, and we dived between them, rolling sideways as I desperately locked down loose compartments to keep all our belongings from spilling. Then those same tentacles snapped back, lashing where we'd been an eye blink before. We banked the other way, circling around. The whale kept grabbing.
It was smarter or more random than it looked. A tentacle flew up to slap at where we were about to be. Father yanked a lever, and the propellers stopped. I slammed the switches from lift to ballast, and we dropped like a stone out of the tentacle's path. Just as Father started us up again, I flipped the switches back, and we sped forward.
A buzzing bothered me. No, not a buzzing, exactly. It came from the Chatter. The whale was screaming, so loud that it went up and down the bands, and even tuned in to the squadron's communication channel it rasped at me.
With Father and I drawing all of the whale's attacks, the squadron must be taking it apart, up there.
Something moved under the bell, something that wasn't a tentacle. "Father, kites!" I yelled. They'd been slow to emerge. I'd stupidly thought this whale was alone.
Father let go of the wheel. He couldn't possibly expect me to fly us through this alone? As he grabbed the cannon controls instead, I maxed the propellers, plunging us past the latest swinging tentacle, then turned the wheel gently to pull us in a long, straight arc. We had these few seconds free, and I had to hold us steady so that he could aim.
I felt the thump as the cannon fired. Not nearly as hard as the first kite felt it. The shell slammed into it. There were only two more shells. We needed the whalebone to restock. We couldn't have afforded a miss.
That kite fell, trailing glittering blood. Another sped right over its tumbling body, a rippling black diamond hurtling straight for us. Father grabbed the wheel again, and we twisted aside. I slapped the switches back into ballast. We dropped.
Not quite fast enough. The kite's wing clipped the tip of our upraised wing. We tumbled. Father managed to cling to the wheel and not get slapped around the cabin. I switched half the switches back to lift. Father kicked a switch with his boot as we straightened out.
Unbelievable. That had been deliberate. As we reared back, the harpoon fired, smacking into the kite from close range. Flying straight away from us, it couldn't dodge. The kite swung around on this new tether, yanking at us, but I picked up the port propeller strength and yanked back. This was my strength against his, and even a big kite like him couldn't compete. His tails flailed uselessly. I spun the wheel, twisted us around, until trying to pull away pinned him in one place in a tug-of-war.
He couldn't afford to stand still so long. Father swung around the cannon and shot him through the middle.
His squealing on the Chatter stopped. The Chatter went silent. The whale's tentacles no longer flailed, even weakly. It was dead.
Had there been a third kite? Yes, there it hung from Sopwith Camel, also dead.
The squadron's Chatter band opened up with cheering. The hunt was a success, and thanks to Father and I, we'd taken no casualties.
Father didn't cheer. He turned away from the windshield, facing the rest of the cockpit. The rest of me, I suppose. I had to take over circling us back up towards the squadron as he gave me that look. Father has heavy brows and a very solid face, and there was no happiness or pride in his glare. "What was that?" he demanded.
"I dropped us as fast as I could, Father. The kite was too close when we turned!" I whined by instinct. Then I was mad at myself. Excuses wouldn't do any good.
"And you didn't pull the wings back, why?" he demanded again.
That would have worked. I could have had them out of the way and dodged the kite in a fraction of a second. Plus, we'd have fallen faster. "I didn't think of it, Father. I'm sorry," I answered. There was nothing else to say, was there?
"Clumsy, inferior-" Father started to growl, but the Chatter interrupted him.
"Aren't you being a little hard on Red, Manfred? Not many airships can keep up with your flying," Captain Todd suggested.
That was useless. There was no making peace with Father. He shut the Chatter off with his fist, and stomped back out of the cabin into his quarters
He didn't speak to me the rest of the day.
The rest of the squadron spent the day cutting up the whale and preparing it for transport. I had nothing to do with that. I had no cargo room to speak of, and Father wouldn't want me involved. He did pilot us up to the crude dock to go aboard the other airships and discuss the hunt, but he came back and cast us off, then went to bed. All without a word.
The squadron moved out, the pilots heading for bed and leaving their airships following a sedate, automatic course back to port. They dragged what would float along behind. I hovered on the edge of the formation, guarding against the very unlikely possibility of attack.
Very unlikely. We cruised along between the grey clouds and the cold gleam of the stars, the world silent except for the drum of propellers.
Except the world is never silent. That was what the Chatter was for. Thanks to the Chatter, the entire squadron had heard Father tell me my mistake today. Thanks to the Chatter, I didn't have to talk to them about it.
I wandered through the main bands, but all I got was a distant muttering, a thousand distant voices blending together. The rest of the squadron would hear me if I called out on those channels.
I drifted away from the civilized bands, and I knew I'd left them when I heard a brief, high-pitched wail. Somewhere, a kite was calling to other kites. I wasn't afraid. It could be thousands of miles away. The Chatter carries. Farther, and I heard another wail, but then the droning had begun. Any more kite noises drowned in the singing of the whales, filling the world, unheard by pilots, heard only by airships when we listened.
I drifted past that. I passed a band where something chirped, over and over. I didn't know what. I kept searching, until I picked up a voice.
"-know that you're always listening, stars," she said. She had a soft, tired voice.
"I guess I'm listening too," I answered. Would she shut up, or yell at me, or find another band? It was worth it just to find out, wasn't it?
A hesitation, then she answered, "Don't. You'll be bored." Those words should have been playful, but she only sounded tired.
"I have nothing to do but watch the sky tonight. My Father isn't talking to me," I said. My propellers skipped guiltily. It wasn't right, talking bad about him.
"I'll trade. This is the only time I can get away from my Mom," she told me. Was that a grudging hint of humor I heard?
"I guess both our parents aren't happy with us," I said.
A long, drawn out sigh, and she related, "I don't know if it's worse wh
en it is or isn't my fault. She blamed me when she tripped, then I got so nervous I lost my balance and dropped a dish on the floor and broke it. After that, she had plenty to yell about until bedtime."
Ouch. That sounded worse than my Father's frosty disapproval. "My Father is just never satisfied. He may be the best pilot there is, and I know I can be as good as he is, but he wants me to be that good now. He's had his whole life to learn."
"I'm sure you're better than he wants to admit. I'm as slow and clumsy as Mom thinks I am," she told me.
She'd sounded like she meant it. How could you cheer someone like that up? "I know you're good at something," I insisted. That sounded so weak. It wasn't going to work. I knew it hadn't, because she wasn't answering. "Tonight I found a girl talking to the stars on a band way out past the whale song. She has to be special to think of that."
I'd hidden a test in there. The way she talked, I was